We received a great update from HALI's own Dr. Annette Roug last week, who has been in Tanzania with our team and the Tanzania National Park vets continuing their ongoing study of park buffalo populations....

Roug collared cow

Dr. Roug, Erasto, and park staff work to remove a tracking collar from an anesthetized buffalo cow.

Roug tubes

The HALI team is collecting blood from the buffalos to monitor their health and help park staff improve conservation and management.

Roug buffalo

African buffalo in Ruaha National Park

- Annette Roug

During the last few weeks, HALI team members were back in Ruaha National Park for buffalo work. The GPS collars that we placed in 2014 have now run out of battery. We attempted to find buffaloes with collars in order to remove the collars. In addition, we sampled another five animals for disease testing and conducted demographic surveys.

The capture and sampling of the five additional animals were successful. We sampled four bulls and one cow from three different herds. We succeeded in removing one collar. The cow had a little calf and both looked very healthy.

The pictures show the sampling of buffalo bulls near Jongomero, and one shows HALI's Erasto Katowo and myself removing the collar from the cow with the ID SAT1497. The remaining are photos of buffalo and the blood tubes that we collect.

Slowly but surely, bit by bit, I'm going to invite you to make your your way through my field experience in Tanzania, wherein I teamed up with an amazing bunch of individuals to find out where the bats fly to.

Every evening come dusk (or a little before, truth be told), Eidolon helvum, also know as the straw-colored fruit bats, start swarming above their tree roosts like bees, imagine if you will, but bigger and spread higher and wider across the sky. They circle above you for what seems like an eternity, and then just as you start questioning the wisdom of standing under hundreds of flying bats (and their droppings, but that's when PPE comes into play right?), they spread out and make their way towards lands unknown for yet another night of foraging. No one knows where they are going, just that they go somewhere. No one who sees bats flying around knows where they are coming from, just that they come from somewhere. That's where we stepped in, and decided to unearth us some bat traveling secrets.

And so, the Bat Diaries will chronicle my journey to Morogoro, Udekwa, and Illovo, three vastly different places in Tanzania united by the warmth of the local people, beautiful landscapes, and delicious ugali. Three places where the VISHA team braves the elements of the capricous seasons, to sample bats so we know more about what viruses they're shedding, and when they're more likely to shed them. Except this time, I was lucky enough to tag along with the team, and get to do some bat tracking!

Photo by Nistara Randhawa

Did I mention only straw-colored fruit bats above? Well, we also sampled the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus), like the adorable mom bat pictured here.

HALI's now famous Dr. Popo (Zikankuba Sijali, the bat doctor), Chris Kilonzo, and our newly minted One Health Officer, Alphonce Msigwa have been hard at work scoping sites and sampling wildlife as part of HALI's zoonotic disease investigations for our PREDICT and viral sharing between human and animal populations projects. They've been sending us field updates on a pretty regular basis over WhatsApp, which is proving to be a great tool for real-time situational awareness. Plus with that hardcore encryption it even passes HIPAA standards so is certified secure for protecting the privacy of our stakeholders and research participants.

One of the team's latest updates came from Chita, a small village in the Udzungwa Mountains area of Tanzania where our team has been working with a local health clinic to sample patients with febrile illnesses to find out if there are fevers of unknown origin that may be zoonotic and potentially caused by viruses transmitted by wildlife like bats that often roost in people's homes or from monkeys in local forests where people frequently go to hunt, gather, and spend time. Who doesn't love a forest?

I scraped the pics in this slideshow from our WhatsApp feed and added Zika's captions along with a few of my own for clarity to highlight one day in the life of this bat sampling crew, this time working in a village setting targeting micro bats that roost in the roofs of homes and prove to be quite a nuisance for the Chita residents. Thanks to Zika and our One Health Officer's efforts, the HALI team has been doing a good job sticking up for bats and promoting conservation for the ecosystem services they provide (eating insects and mosquitoes a huge one in an endemic malaria zone). But there is certainly a lot of work to be done to mitigate the risks for disease transmission, even some easy fixes like low cost improvements to homes to prevent the bats from moving in and taking up residence by adding screens and repairing ceiling panels. But low cost is not no cost, so until there is a Chita Champion the HALI team will keep working with the community on zoonotic disease outreach and prevention ideas.

WhatsApp feed

A screenshot of our team's WhatsApp feed keeping our international team up to speed on the great work HALI does in the field.

Welcome to Chita

Welcome to Chita. Population.... ?

Where are the bats?

Wandering the streets looking for signs of bats.

Our trusted guide

Children are often the best local guides. With plenty of time to play and explore and their natural curiosity, they are great for helping find wildlife like bats.

Bat roosts

Finding local bat roosts in the eaves and under roofs of local homes

Roof damage

Ceilings like these are great for bats to get up into the roof where they can live uninterrupted and really bother the people below with guano and urine, then smell and noise.

In October 2014, HALI and Ruaha National Park researchers sampled and placed satellite GPS collars on 10 adult female buffaloes in order to learn more about the health and herd movements of the Ruaha buffalo population.

Below you’ll find three days of dispatches from the most recent buffalo survey work. For a basic overview of the project, listen to this interview with David Wolking. Annette Roug is leading the HALI buffalo research in the park.

The goal of the wet-season buffalo survey was to determine herd sizes, locate collared buffaloes, and if possible, assess herd composition. We also wanted to record habitat types in areas most frequently used by the buffaloes during the wet season.

Day 1, February 25Ruaha National Park graciously provided a plane that enabled us to conduct an initial survey from the air. We saw and photographed all but one of the buffalo herds with collared animals from the plane. Four animals were located north of Jongomero, one between Msembe and Jongomoro, one near Mdonya, and four in a remote section of the park that is located on a higher elevation plateau which is void of water in the dry season. These aerial photographs will help us determine herd sizes and better understand how the herd sizes are changing over the seasons.

Picture 1: A buffalo herd photographed from the air.

In the afternoon we proceeded to search for the buffalo herds from the ground, and successfully located the herd seen near Mdonya. We were lucky and saw the collared buffalo. She was in great condition and the collar appeared to fit well. We did condition scoring of all visible buffaloes, estimated herd composition, and took notes regarding the vegetation in the area.

Picture 2: Collared buffalo near Mdonya on February 25th.

Day 2, Thursday February 26We went north of Jongomero to locate a large herd with 4 collared buffaloes. On the way from Msembe to Jongomero we listened for one buffalo known to be with a smaller group using a VHF antenna and receiver. This was the group we had not been able to see from the air. We heard a clear signal but she was across the Ruaha River.

North of Jongomero we came very close to the collared animals and heard the VHF signals of all of them. We went off road to see the herd(s), but they kept moving in front of us (based on the many tracks and warm feces). The vegetation was very thick, brushy, and sometimes also muddy, so it was very difficult to drive. We saw a few buffaloes but they were very nervous and ran off into thick bush where we could not follow. We recorded the vegetation types of the area, approximated the herd size and recorded observations of the buffaloes we had seen. On the way back to Msembe we listened for the smaller group again, but she was still across the river. Daniel Mathayo (Ruaha National Park ecologist) said the river was high right now, so she likely would not cross back anytime soon.

Day 3, Friday February 27From our collar data and the aerial survey we knew that the remaining four collared buffaloes were up on the higher elevation plateau, out of the Rift Valley. A ranger reported that he had seen a buffalo herd near the road to Mpululu (located on the plateau) the night before. We had not planned to drive up onto the plateau since there are only few roads and it gets very muddy after rain. However, the ranger reported that the road to Mpululu was open, so we went up there to try to see the herds.

We heard the VHF signal of 3 of the 4 collared buffaloes at different times and came within 2 km of the last location of one of the buffaloes (logged at 5 am Friday morning). We tried to drive toward the signal but kept running into water or very muddy areas. There were also a lot of thorn bushes, and we had one puncture (asante Erasto for changing the tire).

In the end we found a drier grassy area and managed to drive for a while towards the signals. After a few kilometers we were blocked off by a huge "korongo" (a seasonal waterway) with a 100 feet drop to the bottom. That was the end of it! We still could hear the signals there, but had to turn around.

Picture 3: Challenging wet season driving near Jongomero.

We described the vegetation of the area (so we obtained useful information from the adventure) but did not see the animals. We have decent aerial pictures of those herds, so we will still be able to estimate herd size and possibly get some information on herd composition.

--

Overall, we accomplished the main goals of the exercise, which was to estimate the wet season herd sizes and understand more about the seasonal habitat preference, but due to the tick vegetation and wet terrain, we were unable to reach all the herds. We are thankful to Ruaha National Park for the great collaboration on this project.

A few weeks ago I was invited to present at the UC Davis Student’s for One Health Club's Project Design Workshop on making a project sustainable. The intent was to use HALI as a case study of project sustainability, a shining model for others to learn from and follow. But in preparing for the workshop, I confronted two unanticipated concepts:

Sustainability for a research project is very tricky and maybe not all that relevant.

While we strive towards a vision of sustainability for HALI, viability may be a more realistic goal.

For more, you can simply Google “how to make a project sustainable” and find all you need to get started. I did. More useful in my opinion is communicating the challenges a project like HALI confronts in working towards a definition of sustainability. Let's get started.

How do you make a collaborative research and capacity building project like HALI sustainable?

What does sustainability even mean in this context? Does it have to be Venn diagram ready? What about viability, where does it fit into the picture?

Conventionally, sustainability and viability are different sides of the same coin separated only by time, where sustainability is viability over the long-term. HALI is a pretty good example of a viable research project.

The HALI Story - A Decade of Hits (well almost…)

Viable projects generate info-graphics.

Once upon a time, 2006 in fact and with funding from USAID, HALI began as a partnership between UC Davis, the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Vermont and other local Tanzanian organizations uniting multiple disciplines in a One Health approach to investigate the epidemiology and impact of zoonotic diseases on health and livelihoods in the Ruaha Ecosystem. The initial USAID support lasted until 2009 (with the addition of other small grants), and our research team leveraged the capacity and infrastructure developed in the first 3 years along with research findings to secure a new collaboration with UC San Francisco and the Tanzania National Institute for Medical Research. Under this new collaboration, HALI was awarded NIH funds to further expand our One Health approach to investigate the epidemiology of tuberculosis and Brucella in the area, including medical surveillance of local clinics and sampling of people in HALI study communities.

Around the same time, an international consortium led by the UC Davis One Health Institute was awarded the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT project, which included Tanzania as a priority country for strengthening disease surveillance at high-risk human-animal interfaces for spillover and transmission of potentially pandemic viruses from wildlife to people. Since HALI had already established core capacity in disease surveillance, especially wildlife disease surveillance (thanks Envirovet Summer Institute!), PREDICT invested in HALI and Sokoine University of Agriculture’s (SUA) Faculty of Veterinary Medicine as the Tanzania implementing partner. Through PREDICT, HALI expanded in scope from Ruaha to other parts of Tanzania and further developed the diagnostic capacity at SUA for viral detection.

In 2010, HALI also received an award to build-on research in health and livelihood improvement back home in the Ruaha Ecosystem through the USAID-funded Feed the Future Innovation Lab - Collaborative Research for Adapting Livestock Systems to Climate Change. The HALI 2.0 project was forged, continuing efforts working at the community level to strengthen livestock health and pastoralist nutrition and livelihoods.

In 2013-14, through capacity developed with USAID and NIH support and relationships made during PREDICT, HALI forged another partnership with Metabiota with support from a new US Federal Agency. Two more One Health projects were designed, one exploring the epidemiology of Rift Valley Fever and Brucella in the Kilombero and Iringa regions and the other investigating viral transmission of bat, non-human primate, and human populations sharing forest fragment ecosystems in and around the Udzungwa Mountains National Park. Our team is actually in Tanzania right now doing initial site and scoping visits with SUA and a new addition to the HALI family, the Ifakara Health Institute.

HALI is a very successful and viable project.

We are fortunate to have a great team of scientists and collaborators from around the world that continue to push our research and impact forward at multiple levels, from field assistants working at the community interface to staff scientists and Principal Investigators interfacing with ministry and agency partners. There is a tremendous amount of energy invested in continued capacity strengthening for our team and in identifying new opportunities when existing projects approach their natural end. We even have a rubric, yes a rubric for evaluating if opportunities are a good fit with our core vision and approach. There have been some lean years and some uncertain times when we weren’t sure of HALI’s future and our ability to retain our amazing team and continue our work, but overall we have weathered the storms and find ourselves in 2015 with five major programs running simultaneously out of our UC Davis and SUA-based hubs. We are even hiring, always a good sign.

But is HALI sustainable?

Despite all of our successes, HALI today is not sustainable, at least not under a conventional definition of sustainability where the project operates independently over long-term horizons. As a research program, we are and likely will be always dependent on some level of donor or agency funding and investment, opportunities that ebb and flow in an extremely competitive and political climate over which we have no control. I challenge any project operating in this environment to convince me of its sustainability. Except maybe PARIMA, that was some great work and took a few decades.

So what is a sustainable research project?

Is it one that facilitates lasting change and impact long after the funding stream dries out? One that cranks out high-impact publications of relevance and interest with tons of citations? Research for development that informs successful interventions? One that trains scientists who over long careers train another generation of scientists ensuring the creation and continuation of knowledge over time?

With these in mind, some elements of HALI seem very sustainable. For example, knowledge created and shared through higher education and in training a new generation of Tanzanian scientists in One Health, and the potentially long-lasting impacts of our disease awareness and environmental education programs in primary schools.

Big Dreams Need Big Teams!

Our project does have visions of sustainability, just no pre-determined plan. We even have an annual “Visioning Meeting” to talk about this stuff, it’s where we developed that rubric! The challenge for HALI is in designing a “sustainability” plan in a context where the concept of sustainability itself is so obscure. Sustainability in 2006 would have been a wildly different discussion and road map than what we would draw-up today.

Despite this challenge, our dedicated efforts towards viability have enabled considerable progress down that road, wherever it may lead. As HALI evolves, so too does our vision of what sustainability could be. A strength of HALI has always been our partnerships and shared commitment to improving health and livelihoods, and our ability to adapt to meet new challenges and take advantage of emerging opportunities.

Next year we celebrate the project’s 10th birthday. HALI is all grown up. A decade of hits. A lot has changed since 2006: new research, new team members and institutions, new study areas, new directions. But the overall vision and culture remain the same, along with dedication and commitment. For project sustainability’s sake, maybe that’s all that matters.

HALI Scientist Dr. Liz Vanwormer from UC Davis led a team into the forests of the Udzungwa Mountains to track baboons and monkeys and forage for specimens for the PREDICT project. These specimens are now at the UC Davis laboratory where they will undergo screening for viruses as part of a global initiative funded by USAID designed to detect and prevent the spillover of pathogens from animals to people.

The Udzungwa Mountains in Tanzania are a biodiverse area, home to a number of non-human primate species, including some endangered primates. The forested areas are under increasing pressure from agricultural intensification and development bringing animals and people into close proximity, which could lead to spillover of pathogens from animals to people.

A family of baboons in the Udzungwa forest area where the HALI team led by Dr. Liz Vanwormer collected samples to screen for potential pathogens that could pose a risk to human and animal health.

A young baboon waits outside the HALI Land Cruiser. Baboons are often found near roadsides and areas where people congregate and are expert scavengers and opportunists always ready to take some "samples" of their own from unsuspecting people.

Monkeys rest in trees in the Udzungwa forests, watching the HALI team pass by on the trails and acclimating to their new guests who wait patiently for an opportunity to collect specimens.

The HALI team prepares swabs to take a specimen from fresh feces. Dr. Vanwormer's team used a non-invasive sampling method, observing monkeys in the forest and waiting for them to defecate to collect fresh fecal material, the best option for recovering viral RNA according to the PREDICT project's viral detection protocols.

After sampling, the HALI team puts the collected feces into cryovials pre-loaded with a preservation media to protect the genetic material from degradation.

Once the specimens are placed in the cryovials with the preservation media, the vials are stored into canes and loaded into a liquid nitrogen charged container to deep freeze the specimens until they can be transported to the lab.

A HALI team member loads specimens into a liquid nitrogen-charged dry shipper to freeze them until they can be archived and placed into long-term storage in freezers at the HALI lab back at the Sokoine University of Agriculture.

The HALI team loads up a dry shipper into one of the frame packs our team prefers for transporting the heavy containers over the steep trails of the Udzungwa Mountains.

After finishing sampling for the day, the team heads back to camp to rest, cook some delicious food (ugali and greens), and drink chai before turning in early for the night. Field work with wildlife involves early mornings and long days, but beautiful scenery.

A pair of baboons grooms near the trailhead where the HALI team collected specimens.

Dr. Liz Vanwormer, a UC Davis scientist and team leader for the HALI project and PREDICT Tanzania team rests near some Sherman traps used for capturing small mammals. Dr. Vanwormer played a critical role in training the PREDICT Tanzania team and is helping HALI develop a new research project on viral sharing between wildlife and people in the Udzungwa area.

Pastoralists at focus groups in the Ruaha Ecosystem voiced concern about climate change impacting livestock health and livelihoods and requested more education to increase their resiliency. HALI is working to tailor locally relevant education to these communities on livestock health, disease, and productivity, and eventually through programs in human nutrition. Photo by C. Gustafson.

- David Wolking

In rural Tanzania, pastoralists and their livestock are increasingly vulnerable to a changing climate. Diminished rainfall, and increasing rates of deforestation and agricultural intensification stress existing rangeland availability and productivity, and pressure pastoral communities to adapt traditional production and livelihoods for survival.

Previous HALI project research identified infectious disease as a major production limitation with impacts on rural incomes and food security. But the HALI team led by Drs. Christopher Gustafson and Liz VanWormer, and Asha Makweta also wanted to know what pastoralists considered the main challenges to livestock production and livelihood improvement.

Locally relevant education has the potential to make pastoralists’ livestock herds and livelihoods more resilient in a landscape rapidly being altered by environmental change. 

In a new research brief published by the Colorado State University led Livestock and Climate Change CRSP, the HALI team describes results of focus groups held with pastoralist representatives and local leaders in 21 villages in the Ruaha Ecosystem. In addition to confirming initial research findings emphasizing the importance of disease on health and livelihoods, focus group findings identified a critical intervention request: education. All focus groups identified education as a key priority in improving livestock health and increasing resiliency. While recognizing water shortages, availability and access to markets, veterinary services, and availability of medicines and other factors as challenges, education was stressed as a mechanism to empower pastoral communities that are frequently undeserved and marginalized by exiting infrastructure. To pastoralists in the HALI community, knowledge is power, and providing locally relevant and customized education has the potential to increase resiliency of livelihoods and a lifestyle under siege from rapid environmental change.

- David Wolking

The PREDICT team has been working with partner HealthMap for several years to develop a public platform for the release of our wildlife surveillance and viral testing results. One of the challenges in rolling out a public platform featuring information on wildlife species, their locations at the time of sampling, and any findings from our diagnostic tests looking at RNA viruses is government approval. PREDICT is a big project, active in 20 countries worldwide (give or take depending on permit status), and establishing data sharing and release policies with government ministries is no easy task. Developing a platform for the display of PREDICT data after securing government approval, a platform that meets the needs of all partners is also a challenge.

PREDICT's new public face on HealthMap. Here you can see the overview of surveillance progress in Tanzania as of early December 2013. Our HALI team has been busy sampling wildlife throughout the country at areas we have identified as high-risk for human-animal contact and potential disease transmission.

So this month when HealthMap went live with a soft release of our PREDICT site featuring surveillance locations and info we were very excited.

For the first time our PREDICT teams could share the fruits of 4+ years of labor sampling bushmeat and capturing bats, rodents, and non-human primates with our partners and the global public. Even better, we could finally demonstrate how our diagnostic findings would be publicly displayed to government partners and ministries, making discussions on data approval for public release more straightforward.

As implementing partner for PREDICT in Tanzania, our HALI team led by Drs. Zikankuba Sijali and Liz Vanwormer has been very proactive. In just 3 years they identified multiple locations as high-risk for human-wildlife contact, mapped them according to priority for wildlife disease transmission and emergence, and hit the road. This surveillance road trip is nicely captured by PREDICT's HealthMap site, where surveillance activities are clustered by geographic location. You can click around on the country map using basic Google Maps zoom functions, zero in on the "bubbles" highlighting surveillance activity, and explore the different species our team has sampled based on location. Eventually as we clear our diagnostic results with the government of Tanzania, you will be able to view the RNA viruses we detected in animals at these sites, along with helpful links to what our findings mean for wildlife and public health.

An example of PREDICT surveillance progress on our HealthMap site from Tanga. The HALI team identified Tanga as an area of surveillance priority due to the presence of large bat caves (Amboni Caves) where ecotourists frequently encounter bats and other roosting sites for fruit bats near the Indian Ocean coastline.

It's Halloween and we all want our mummies. Thankfully Nick Brandt comes to the rescue with some amazingly appropriate content.

Our PREDICT team especially likes this mummified fruit bat.

In northern Tanzania, Lake Natron beckons wild birds and bats to their deaths by using the lakes reflective surface as a visual attractant. The animals crash into the lake's surface and the water's chemical content, extremely high in soda and salts, calcifies their carcasses, preserving them as they wash ashore.

Nick, a talented photographer, walked the shores of Lake Natron collecting the carcasses and then posed them in the landscape as if they were brought back to life; the Evil Dead, or more realistically, dead souls come to haunt the living or spirits warning us about the Lake's dark powers.

Jonna Mazet assisting Ruaha National Park and Sokoine University of Agriculture veterinarians with a giraffe immobilization. Dr. Mazet has been integrating animal, environmental and human health in projects like HALI throughout the world, building global foundations for One Health research and practice.

- David Wolking

Dr. Jonna Mazet, HALI project co-founder, was inducted into the prestigious Institute of Medicine this month, part of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Mazet is one of the pioneers of the One Health approach, a philosophy recognizing that human animal and environmental health are inextricably linked. Dr. Mazet has utilized this approach to tackle global health challenges.

"I feel like I’m being honored for a body of work that is only possible because I’ve been lucky to work with an amazing team. We can only begin to solve global problems by working effectively together across disciplinary, geographic and political boundaries."

In addition to her work directing the HALI project, Dr. Mazet is also the global director of the $75 million program PREDICT project, part of USAID's Emerging Pandemic Threats program. With PREDICT, she has brought together an interdisciplinary team of experts build a global early warning system for emerging diseases that move between wildlife and people, such as HIV, Ebola and SARS. Through her leadership on PREDICT, she has expanded the One Health workforce by more than 2,500 people and discovered 250 viruses known to cause epidemics. She has been instrumental in supporting HALI's initiatives to implement PREDICT in Tanzania, where our team continues to make progress towards improving wildlife disease surveillance and building the diagnostic capacity required for viral detection and discovery.

In addition to her work on PREDICT, Dr. Mazet is the director of the UC Davis One Health Institute and Wildlife Health Center, innovative centers of excellence in health research whose accomplishments include diagnosis of novel infections, understanding and tracking pathogen pollution from victims to source, and supporting the conservation of endangered species, from mountain gorillas in Rwanda to sea otters in California. At UC Davis, Mazet also founded California’s Oiled Wildlife Care Network, the world’s premier model for wildlife emergency health response.

As a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine, Mazet mentors veterinary and graduate students and postdoctoral trainees, and provides service to government agencies and the public regarding emerging infectious disease and conservation challenges.

Among her accomplishments, Mazet received the International Wildlife Disease Association and American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians Joint Thorne Williams Award for most significant contribution to the field of wildlife health in 2011. She also received the 2012 Outstanding Alumna Award from UC Davis, where she earned all of her higher education degrees and has spent the bulk of her 19-year career.

Dr. Jonna Mazet, at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, talks about how wildlife, such as seals and sea otters, tug at our heartstrings and may offer an early warning system for identifying environmental changes.

Interested in learning more about One Health, the WIldlife Health Center, and how Dr. Mazet's projects are impacting health and livelihoods across the world? Contact us at the HALI project.

Want to help Dr. Mazet continue supporting health and livelihoods worldwide, or continue to support the health and conservation of wildlife from California mountain lions to mountain gorillas? Consider a donation to the One Health Institute or Wildlife Health Center.

HALI team member, Miss Asha Makweta with her poster during the Iringa
March for Elephants.

Could we live in a world without
elephants? That might be an easier
question to answer if elephants are not part of your life, your landscape, or
your culture. But in Tanzania and
throughout Africa, elephants (tembo
or ndovu in Kiswahli) are very much
part of day-to-day life. Ecological engineers, they prune our
forests, disperse seeds and plant trees, blaze trails and make firebreaks, occasionally
eat from our gardens, and grace the labels of our favorite beers. But a world without elephants may soon become
a reality without change, change that the Wildlife Connection and
other conservation groups are working to achieve.

Wildlife Connection is a non-governmental
organization in Pawaga and Idodi Divisions in Iringa Rural District. On
4 October 2013, the NGO organized the local event for the March for Elephants campaign in Iringa town to show their compassion for elephants and opposition to the enormous killing and destruction of elephants in Southern Tanzania’s protected areas, including Ruaha National Park and MBOMIPA Wildlife Management Area. Many stakeholders
were invited to this special event in Iringa, and as part of the campaign, 40 other big cities around
the world held similar marches.

The HALI project was invited to the march, as
one of the stakeholders dealing with health for animals, both domestic and wild.
Project Coordinator, Dr. Goodluck Paul and other staff including Asha Makweta,
Elizabeth Komba and Amani Zacharia joined other stakeholders from Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS), Udzungwa Elephant Project (UEP), Southern Tanzania
Protected Area Network (SPANEST), Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB), Tanzania Association
for Tour Operators (TATO) and Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) to fight against
the brutality against elephants.

Some statistics, shared by the
guest of honor, Shadow Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism Mr. Peter
Msigwa show that elephant poaching is a big threat to these animals, and is responsible
for a massive decrease in elephants numbers from 2,000,000 in 1971 to 130,000
today, with major social, ecological and economic impacts. In a nutshell, a
total of 33,000 elephants were killed from 2010 to 2013 in Tanzania, and if
this rate of poaching increases or is sustained, in seven years elephants will be
locally extinct in Tanzania, a disaster to the country economy, which depends heavily
on wildlife and safari tourism and a devastating blow to our culture which has
shared this landscape with elephants since the dawn of human history.

These statistics puzzled the HALI staff and our team is now working to prepare
posters and work to raise awareness of these issues, and to share their concerns about elephants and wildlife, their health, ecology, and
survival.

*Alphonce Msigwa is a wildlife professional, journalist and conservation enthusiast working with the HALI project on the USAID-funded Feed the Future Livestock Innovation Lab Collaborative Research Support Program project. He has published over 30 articles in Tanzania wildlife magazines and journals, and looks forward to contributing more to the HALI blog, especially on livelihood and conservation issues.

A train station in Tanzania where the PREDICT team is sampling bats to learn more about potential diseases that can move animals and people.

-David Wolking

A few years ago we brought cameras to our HALI field team. Two Olympus Stylus Tough point and shoot digital cameras and one Canon Rebel. We also imported a photographer from the US, Misty Richmond, to help our team learn more about photography, and thanks to her lessons and some help from scientists Christopher Gustafson and Liz Vanwormer, we are getting amazing photographs from all over Tanzania.

This shot, by our field technician and Tanzania travel guru Muhiddin Salehe, beautifully captures the essence of train travel in Africa, complete with bananas aboard the engineer's platform. Truckers and other drivers frequently purchase produce in bulk from rural areas where it is cheaper, and transport it on the roofs, platforms, and trailer hitches home to families or to markets for sale.

At some point we really need to curate all of these great images and do a HALI photo exhibition.

- David Wolking

Today Dr. Liz Vanwormer is returning from Tanzania. Liz has been working with the HALI team on PREDICT, and is leading a project investigating pathogen transmission between bats, monkeys, and people in the Udzungwa Mountains National Park and surrounding areas. That's a pretty special project, and we'll learn more about it as it develops, but it's not our main focus.

Our main focus today is bat poop. Why? Because we spend a lot of time and money collecting it. We find bats, we sample them, collect their poop, put it in vials with a special preservative, and then freeze it in liquid nitrogen. If the bats don't have poop, we swab them, using a very small tipped swab and yes, we lubricate the tip. We are not sadists. All of these poop and fecal swab samples are taken to our lab in Morogoro where our technician Ruth uses a special protocol to extract RNA from the poop. Once we have the RNA, we use it to synthesize complementary DNA (cDNA), then we freeze that cDNA and use it to run our viral family screening tests to look for genetic evidence of viruses. You can find a lot of viruses in bat poop.

- David Wolking

In January, outdoor apparel company Aether was making headlines for unveiling a concept store designed by Thierry Guagain using three stacked shipping containers. There's even a teaser hyping the launch on Hayes Street.

So why all the hype? They're just 20' long rectangular steel containers. Boxes. 7.9 million of these things move through the Port of Los Angeles every year. 31 million in Shanghai. Such vast numbers, such ruggedly commonplace things, these boxes have become the basic ingredients for anything requiring immediate structure and space.

A few years ago in Morogoro, HALI jumped on the shipping container bandwagon (a less crowded wagon at that time), leveled out some ground outside the Sokoine University of Agriculture School of Veterinary Medicine and Public Health, brought in 2 containers, stacked them up, and reinvented them as an advanced molecular diagnostic laboratory for emerging infectious diseases. New buildings cost money, require more permits, take time. Boxes, on the other hand, build up with the simplicity of legos. One atop the other, a few modifications with some cutter torches, and bring in the interior designers.

Initially we envisioned a relatively simply lab, just the stacked containers, some doors, maybe AC units to keep our techs from cooking and our freezers from burning out. But Professor Kazwala had something entirely different in mind. Prof took the design process to heart and reinvented these containers in the French Quarter style. Roof, rails, and decorative ironwork, balconies and windows and flooring, they're a work of art. Our lab is no longer a couple of boxes that in a former life held electronics, someone's belongings in an international move, or auto parts bound for the plant. These boxes are opening up new worlds in scientific discovery, as our technicians Ruth and Joseph work on identifying novel pathogens.

The beginning

The HALI lab at Sokoine University started out as 2 steel containers on a platform. Photo by David Wolking.

Two balconies along with mutliple windows increase the amount of interactive social and workspace, and diminish the feeling of confinement often felt in cramped shipping container buildings. Photo by Brett Smith.

In real time

A real-time PCR machine procured with USAID funds and other lab equipment enable the HALI technicians to conduct state of the art molecular diagnostic techniques in the new lab space. Photo by Brett Smith.

Benches

Inside the lab, a view of a the bench space and workstations for HALI technicians. Photo by Brett Smith.

GenBank

A separate room holds two ultra-low temperature freezers, backed up by diesel generator in case of a power failure. These freezers contain all HALI biological materials, and are the archive for all samples - our library of wildlife and animal samples used for diagnostic testing. Photo by Brett Smith.

Generator

Our back-up generator, also procured with USAID funds, allows the HALI lab to safely store samples and conduct diagnostic work even during the frequent power outages in Tanzania. Photo by Brett Smith.

Balconies

The HALI lab is home to a number of projects, including USAID's PREDICT project, and a One Health project funded by the US National Institutes of Health. Lab technicians are currently working on a number of diagnostic activities from molecular detection of tuberculosis to screening of rodent and bat specimens for arenaviruses. Photo by Brett Smith.

Brett, Ruth, and Kitime

Brett Smith, laboratory manager for the One Health Institute at UC Davis with the HALI lab team Ruth Maganga and Ally Kitime. Brett has been working closely with Ruth as a mentor transferring technology and knowledge on PREDICT's novel diagnostic approach, using broadly reactive consensus-based (genus/family level) PCR to detect a wide variety of viruses from each animal sample. Photo by the HALI team.

Moto Lab

Everything looks cooler with motorcycles. Our lab team is moto fresh, and commutes to work on piki piki. Photo by Brett Smith.

At night

We don't work at night, but the lights do. Proof that the HALI lab generator is working despite frequent evening power outages (scheduled blackouts) in Morogoro. Photo by Brett Smith.

So if you're ever in Morogoro, come by the SUA lab, take a tour. It's a great place to hang out on the balcony with a cup of chai, taking in the scenery of Morogoro, mountains and waterfalls in the distance, and learn about HALI's exciting new discoveries. If you're lucky, maybe you'll even meet Professor Kazwala, though he's likely working on another design masterpiece, polishing his portfolio.

The girl reads a book, we read the news like grown-ups. Local media surveillance trained readers in 6 PREDICT countries to screen print media for health events and report them to digital disease detection systems like HealthMap. The HALI project started local media surveillance in 2010.

- David Wolking

I bet you're reading this on an iPhone aren't you? An iPad or some other tablet then? OK fine, it's your PC. When's the last time you read a print edition when you weren't at a doctor's office, or in Vegas, and we all know you were only reading those street papers to check out some lovely ladies or strapping young lads in leather and bow ties. Print is dead! Rest in piece. But it is far from dead everywhere.

In 2010 we starting reading newspapers in Tanzania. But not just any newspaper. Zika, Muhiddin and I went to a street kiosk in Iringa and started an inventory of every paper on sale. Then we went to another kiosk, then another. Some papers were in English, some in Kiswahili, and some were just like those street rags in Vegas, only way stranger. We picked some favorites, papers that covered topics on health, papers that were more than just English Premiere League zines, and cruised back to the office. We Googled those papers and recorded which ones had online editions. Then we went through each issue of the best papers, those with actual news, and assessed how many articles were actually published online (if there was even a website) vs. in the print edition. Results: very few, under 20%.

A newspaper kiosk in some PREDICT country waiting for one of our Local Media Surveillance Weekly Readers.

Were we bored? Maybe. But we were also on a mission. A new project was born and we called it Local Media Surveillance (LMS). At the HALI office not everyone is working all the time. We have drivers, but sometimes we don't drive anywhere. We have interns who sometimes aren't all that busy interning. We have a field team that may not be in the field. But we always have newspapers and we always have chai. So, we turned our workplace culture of reading newspapers and drinking chai into an activity. We subscribed to a few papers (those without online editions), and started skimming them looking for news on health, things like people or animals getting sick, risks for disease emergence like areas in Tanzania where people eat monkeys or mice, or where bats are flying into people's homes. When we found an article, we scanned it. Then we summarized it in English and sent it off to our friends at HealthMap who posted it to their digital disease surveillance network.

What's the point?

Digital disease surveillance systems like HealthMap have automated systems that screen the web and news media in supported languages for key words on diseases and disease outbreaks. Then they post the news to maps. In real time they showcase health alerts from around the world and do a great job providing early warning of outbreaks to decision makers and the public. But we work in Tanzania, and they speak Kiswahili. HealthMap doesn't speak Kiswahili (yet), and we noticed that the map of Tanzania didn't have too many alerts, so we wondered if they were missing our news. Then we wondered if they were missing news reports that weren't digitized as well; news reported in papers with no online counterpart. So, through USAID's PREDICT project, we worked with HealthMap and developed a new activity - and Local Media Surveillance was born. I call it "Weekly Readers", and right now in Tanzania my Weekly Readers are busy as always reading newspapers with purpose, they're probably about to discover a Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever outbreak in Uganda.

Today the Local Media Surveillance project is all grown up. Thanks to a talented UC Davis PhD student named Jessica Schwind and our friend and superstar HALI project Principal Investigator Dr. Woutrina Miller, we rolled out LMS from Tanzania to 5 other countries and conducted a formal evaluation on the project's impact and potential. What did we learn? Well, Jessica will let us all know soon. She's presenting the results of the LMS project and evaluation at the Digital Disease Detection Conference this September. But I'll let you in on a secret, LMS works. Weekly Readers make great Disease Detectives, and until print is actually dead, we'll keep on reading and reporting. You can follow our progress by watching LMS pins pop up in Tanzania, Bolivia, Cameroon, Banladesh, Uganda, and Vietnam on HealthMap.

-David Wolking

As a kid I used to read the Strange but True books. They were terrible, but did inspire imagination and a sense of the mysterious in everyday life. Sometimes on our weekly Skype calls a sense of the Strange but True creeps into the conversation.

Last Friday, Zika was leading our PREDICT surveillance team on a trip to sample bat colonies in Nunge, Kilombero, and Ifakara. The fruit bats at Kilombero and Ifakara had since migrated away (likely to the coast where it is warmer), but the team found insectivorous bats at a major train station in the area and went to work.

On the Skype call, all I could think about was bats on trains, and maybe a terrible sequel to Snakes on a Plane with Samuel Jackson fighting off vampire bats as a train rushed over rusty rails to certain demise in the Amazon. But alas, not to be. Zika told us the bats aren't on the trains, they're in the train station. I've never seen a train in Tanzania, less a train station, so I'm imagining a concrete block version of Grand Central Station painted Chama Cha Mapinduzi green and yellow with vendors selling delicacies like BBQ corn or roasted mice, and the station master dangling a gold pocket watch waiting for the big diesel to roll on in, on time of course. That would've been strange but not so true. Luckily Zika shared a few pictures today to clear things up.

Sampling bats

Zika and Muhiddin sample bats near the train station, but away from the crowds. The team wears Tyvek coveralls, gloves, goggles, and respirators as a precaution against any potential pathogens the bats may carry. After sampling the bats are set free to resume their lives providing essential ecosystem services like eating those malaria and dengue carrying mosquitoes.

Train station

People gather to board the train in Tanzania. Insectivorous bats live in the train station, and the PREDICT team is investigating possible public health risks associated with bats at this major transit center.

Bats in Train stations! Not as sexy, but just as relevant from a wildlife disease surveillance perspective. Train stations are full of people, bats live in the station, and right there you have what we call an interface, or point of contact between people and wildlife where disease transmission might occur. Transmission can happen a number of ways, directly through a bite (not likely in this case - these are not vampire bats), or indirectly through exposure to bat saliva, feces, or urine. Think about it. You have this great job as a cleaner for the train station - steady income in a rural area in Africa, as long as that train keeps running, people keep buying tickets, and you keep sweeping. Problem is, these bats poop all over the floor. By the time you get there the guano sweeps up easily enough, but the sweeping and breeze make dust, and you may be breathing in aerosolized pathogens from bat feces. Plus, train station sweepers probably don't have health care, so if they get sick, it's all about the immune system. That's a hypothetical situation, but when we run tests to see what viruses these bats in the train station might be carrying, we will probably use fecal samples as most likely for disease transmission to humans and other animals.

One more Strange but True for today - did you know that my university (University of California) and the military experimented with wild caught bats for use as bombers in World War II? Neither did I, and probably for a reason. What a disaster. Some ideas, like hooking incendiary explosives through the chest skin on a Mexican free-tailed bat, should be left unspoken. They actually thought weaponized bats would be more effective than conventional or atomic explosives in ending the conflict in the Pacific:

"Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped... Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life."

Keep dreaming, and redefine loss of life. That program must have killed 100s of thousands of bats. Way to go UC. Strange but true....

-David
Wolking

“For a time, all
was bountiful in the land, but then drought came. No rain fell for months, and
it became drier and drier, hotter and hotter. The stream stopped flowing. The
water hole turned first to mud and then to dry, cracked earth. One by one, the animals slowly left or
starved until no one was left…” - Lion, Chameleon
and Chicken, A Gogo Bantu Folktale from Tanzania

Ruaha River drying

The Great Ruaha River, once flowing year round, experiences reduced flow in the East African dry season - a factor brining wildlife populations into close proximity and increasing potential disease transmission.

Baboons

Baboons rest in the shade in the Ruaha Ecosystem. The HALI team detected Mycobacterium bovis, which can cause tuberculosis, in yellow baboons and other wildlife in Ruaha, and is exploring the transmission dynamics of M. bovis among wildlife, livestock, and human communities in the area. (Photo by L. Vanwormer).

Boy helps with sampling

A young Maasai boy assists the HALI team while they sample livestock for tuberculosis. HALI has detected Mycobacterium bovis in livestock, which causes bovine tuberculosis - a zoonotic disease. Through NIH funding, HALI is working with pastoralists, villagers, and the National Institute of Medical Research to sample the environment, domestic and wild animals, and people for tuberculosis. This research will help HALI design ecosystem-based management strategies for tuberculosis prevention and control. (Photo by D. Clifford)

Dr. Alex trains the team

Dr. Alex, a HALI team member and veterinarian for Ruaha National Park, trains park and community game scouts in recognizing signs of disease in dead wild animals. HALI recruited rangers and scouts and established a novel wild animal carcass surveillance program in Ruaha to sample dead animals (hunted, killed, poached, or from natural causes) for disease causing pathogens. (Photo by D. Clifford).

Coaster

Coaster, one of HALI's lead game scouts on the wild animal carcass surveillance program reports his latest discoveries to HALI researchers. (Photo by D. Clifford).

HALI game scouts

Scouts working with HALI investigate an impala carcass. On a typical day, the scouts would receive a report from community members about a dead animal, sometimes a baboon shot while raiding crops, or dik dik or impala killed for meat. The scouts then ride out to the scene and collect samples for HALI, storing them in a solar-powered freezer at the HALI field station in Tungamalenga village. (Photo by D. Clifford).

Shukuru

Shukuru, HALI's lead game scout places samples in a cooler for preservation until HALI veterinarians can process the samples for laboratory work at the HALI lab at Sokoine University of Agriculture. (Photo by D. Clifford)

Deana

Dr. Deana Clifford, the study's lead author and program coordinator, worked with a team of experts at Sokoine University of Agriculture to process the animal samples and test them for Mycobacterium bovis, which can cause tuberculosis in animals and people. (Photo by J. Erickson)

Khadijah

Khadijah, one of HALI's laboratory technicians works on samples under a biosafety cabinet, to ensure the lab team is well protected from any disease causing agents as they work to detect mycobacterium in the HALI samples. (Photo by D. Porter).

Buffalo

The HALI wild animal carcass surveillance program led by Deana Clifford detected Mycobacterium bovis in multiple wildlife species in the Ruaha Ecosystem. This study is the first to confirm M. bovis infection in African Buffalo herds in Tanzania. (Photo by W. Miller)

Meat market

Livestock markets like this one in the Iringa District of Tanzania roast meat from cattle and other animals, a favorite dish for many in the area from pastoralists to members of the HALI team. The roasting, when done thoroughly, can kill off the bacteria, but the real risk for disease transmission may be when the meat is butchered and processed. HALI is working with the community in the Ruaha area to better understand routes of tuberculosis transmission to design appropriate prevention and control measures for animals and people. (Photo by D. Wolking)

Change is coming. It was first recognized in the landscape, when the Great
Ruaha River in Tanzania, the lifeblood of a land where miombo woodlands of
Southern Africa blend into the Sudanian Acacia-Commiphora
zone of East Africa, slowly
dried up.
That seasonal drying, along with other changes in the landscape,
agricultural intensification, deforestation, extension of grazing lands into
protected areas, may be the source of other less noticeable changes,
microscopic changes.

In the Ruaha ecosystem, home to Tanzania’s
largest national park and protected area, researchers with the Health for
Animals and Livelihood Improvement (HALI)
project are investigating how these changes at both
the landscape and microscopic level affect the health of wildlife, domestic animal
and human communities. In a new
publication released in June, HALI researchers report
the detection of Mycobacterium bovis, a
bacterium that can cause tuberculosis in animals and humans, in 8 species of
wildlife, including the first detection of M.
bovis, in 3 new species: Kirk’s Dik Dik, vervet
monkeys, and yellow baboons. In addition, the
team detected M. bovis in African
buffalo inside Ruaha National Park, the first confirmed buffalo infection in
Tanzania.

“Although
we anticipated we might find bovine tuberculosis in species closely related to
cattle, like buffalo, the documentation of infection in 8 different species
occupying different ecological niches both within and outside wildlife
protected areas was unexpected and suggests the existence of a complex
wildlife-livestock transmission cycle.” - Dr. Deana Clifford, founding HALI project coordinator and wildlife
veterinarian for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife

The microbial market place

In Ruaha, M.
bovis is not a stranger, at least to domestic animals and their caretakers. There is wide spread bovine
tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle in the area, and as a zoonotic pathogen,
tuberculosis may also affect human communities. The HALI team looked at bTB in livestock, and observing the
land-use changes in the Ruaha area, hypothesized that tuberculosis was also infecting
wildlife populations. Livestock herds frequently share grazing lands, foraging
areas, and water holes with wildlife, and as a result may swap microbes and
parasites with other species through environmental contamination, or in the
case of M. bovis, even through
aerosols, through a cough or a sneeze.

From 2006-2010, HALI worked with game scouts
employed by the Community Wildlife Management Areas bordering Ruaha National
Park, hunting companies, Park staff, and village networks to obtain tissue
samples from hunter-killed, depredated animals (animals killed for causing crop
damage in fields), and carcasses.
Two HALI game scouts, Coaster and Shukuru, social network nodes for news of animal deaths, would hear about
a kill or a carcass and bicycle out into the bush to collect tissue samples and
GPS the location. Samples were
then sent to the project laboratory at the Sokoine University of Agriculture, a
center of excellence for molecular diagnostics and tuberculosis detection.

The team collected tissues from 149 animals
of 30 different species, the majority (69%) collected outside protected areas
in village lands. Sokoine
University cultured the samples for mycobacterium
and used PCR assays to detect M. bovis. Positive samples were spoligotyped (a
technique used to delineate mycobacterium
species and distinguish unique strains), and they found that M. bovis isolates from infected wildlife
were identical to the strains of M. bovis
found in livestock herds. In an
area where human settlements, activities and livestock grazing areas are
pushing further and further into wildlife habitat, the animals are
trading. They just don’t know it, and
it is possible that this microbial trade could be making them sick.

Although the team’s findings suggest that
livestock herds and wildlife are sharing M.
bovis, it is not clear who started it. With M. bovis-infected
African buffalo herd inside Ruaha National Park, a herd that encounters
livestock rarely, and little to no bovine tuberculosis control among livestock
in the area, it is possible M. bovis
is maintained in the ecosystem by both wildlife and livestock. Because the team found M. bovis in wildlife species occupying
very different ecological niches, from buffalo to other ungulates like dik diks
and impala all the way up the evolutionary chain to our primate cousins vervet
monkey and yellow baboon, it appears that M.
bovis is settled down and is planning to stay. Buffalo in particular are a major maintenance host for
bovine tuberculosis in Africa, once bTB is established in a free-ranging herd,
that herd can sustain infection without repeated trade of M. bovis with other animals like livestock. In other words, M. bovis becomes a resident, and since buffalo are often preyed on
or scavenged by carnivores and other wildlife, the microbe can spillover to
other species in the ecosystem, even humans like hunters. In Tanzania wild meat is usually smoked
or roasted, nyama choma, but before you have meat you must have a butcher, and field
dressing a carcass without appropriate hygiene and sanitation measures can be a risk for exposure to bTB.

Regulating the exchange?

Now that M.
bovis seems to be a microbial resident in both livestock and wildlife in
the area, how do you control its spread?
The HALI team identify several management options in the article, but
for a pathogen intrinsically linked to multiple species in different ecological
niches, these management options require an ecosystem-based approach linking
livestock and human health interventions with conservation and development goals.

The Ruaha River is drying, and if that
continues, the health of the entire ecosystem will suffer. The good news is that continuing and
enhancing current conservation efforts to improve hydrologic flow, prevent bank
erosion and improve water quality will increase water abundance, allowing more
spaces for animals to drink and limiting interspecies contact.

Ecological restoration and
conservation efforts should be expanded to preserve remaining wildlife habitat
and help address wildlife forays into village land, farms, and grazing
areas.

The veterinary community can target
test of cattle and wildlife for bTB and a range of other diseases in shared
grazing lands to identify areas or sites with increased spillover risk, and
work to better understand livestock grazing strategies, locations, and sites to
improve planning for pasture access and livestock production.

Finally, and perhaps most critical is
improving livelihoods. Increasing
income to rural residents through poverty reduction programs, increased market
access, training and education can reduce reliance on natural resources for
survival, the driving force behind land use change that may be undermining
ecological health and driving M.bovis
and other zoonotic disease transmission dynamics.

In this approach, conservation is linked to development – with more water from a flowing river, better grazing opportunities, healthier livestock, and improved livelihoods, the pressure for livestock and wildlife to share resources, interact, and exchange microbes can be reduced, and the animals, along with their caretakers, will not have to slowly leave the water holes until no one is left.

It's not as easy as it looks... President Obama juggles more than just business, investment, trade, development, corruption, poverty reduction, health, and conservation in Tanzania. (Photo from adn.com)

- David Wolking

President Obama was in Tanzania today. Sadly he did not visit the HALI project team or our partners at Sokoine University. We understand, there were more pressing issues at hand in Dar es Salaam, where the President met with Tanzania's leaders and discussed improving US-Tanzania relationships, trade, and the investment climate.

Notably, Obama committed $10 million to combat illegal wildlife trafficking in eastern Africa, including a dedicated post through the US Fish and Wildlife Service to support the region through better enforcement, policy, and practice. In addition, he signed an executive order to create a task force dedicated to reducing US demand for trafficked wildlife. This is great news for conservation in East Africa, a traditional wildlife trade and export hub to Asia, and sadly a region where instability and conflict threaten conservation gains as terrorist groups increasingly rely on poaching and trafficking to fund activities.

But the most intriguing element of Obama's focus on Africa is a refreshing step away from aid and donor dependence and towards utilizing US federal assistance and infrastructure as leverage to support greater investments in business, trade, research and development. 'The President promised to "step up our game" in a region that is home to six of the world's 10 fastest growing economies,' and offered advice to African leaders on international partnerships: choose your international partners carefully, and push back against countries that bring in their own workers or mine Africa's natural resources but handle the production outside the continent.

Obama's advice is especially relevant to the international research community, where sadly Africa's abundance of natural resources is all to often exploited for scientific gain by an international community of researchers unwillingly to invest the time, energy, or capital in treating research activities as training grounds and learning labs for an emerging cadre of brilliant African scientists. Part of the problem is no doubt linked to research funding and restrictions on time and resources to adequately integrate capacity building into the research process. However, even with limited funds and tight timelines, capacity building and training can accompany programs and lead to better and more reliable results, along with improving the efficiency and efficacy of research in future projects.

HALI has been working with national parks staff, village leaders, children, community game scouts, livestock extension officers and health officials, students in community development at local training institutes and colleges, and bachelors and graduate level students at Sokoine University since project inception in 2006. Integrating intensive training and professional development into technical research work plans has been a challenging process. Sometimes training is incredibly basic, like learning to use Microsoft Office and Excel, but it can also involve extraordinarily technical lessons like fruit bat capture and immobilization, and molecular diagnostics and viral discovery. We find that capacity building is our most rewarding endeavor, and we hope, our longest lasting investment as this promising young generation of development practitioners and researchers go onto lead their own independent studies, development projects, and entrepreneurial activities in areas well beyond our imagination and HALI's initial scope.

A lot of energy, attention, and investment can follow from US Presidential visit to a country like Tanzania. Let' hope Obama's advice on investing time, energy, and capital is heeded not only by the US and international business and development community, but also by the research and academic community working to understand and identify today's problems and offer up tomorrow's solutions.

Enough soap boxing... check out some of our own young and brilliant scientific leaders over at the HALI Team page.

What does it take to safely anesthetize and collect samples from an adult giraffe (twiga in Kiswahli)? In short, a very carefully planned take-down with highly trained veterinarians and wildlife health technicians....

Check out our slideshow to learn more about HALI's partnership with Ruaha National Park and Sokoine University of Agriculture veterinarians on an investigation into an emerging skin disease in the local giraffe population.

Read more about HALI Partnerships in Wildlife Health here...

Ruaha National Park staff have been monitoring the local giraffe population and noticed a new skin disease impacting giraffe health. With assistance from Park veterinarians, Sokoine University experts, and the HALI team, the Park launched a field investigation to collect samples for analysis to characterize the cause of the disease and identify some treatment options.

With a dart gun loaded, veterinarians in the white vehicle carefully approach the target giraffe. Although the landscape looks ideal, hidden challenges like bushes, ravines, and even snakes make giraffe captures a strenuous undertaking.

HALI project driver, Amani,
keeps the park truck with the animal handling team in sight. The vehicles
follow as the darted giraffe slowly moves through the landscape. Once the
anesthetic drugs take effect, the team moves in with ropes to safely restrain
the giraffe and help lower it to the ground.

Once the giraffe is down, the team moves in to
restrain the head. A sandbag under the neck offers support, and the blindfold
helps to keep the sedated giraffe calm while samples are collected.

It takes a large team to immobilize a giraffe
safely. HALI and Ruaha National Park staff collaborate to ensure a safe and
successful disease investigation. The people holding the ropes are restraining
the giraffe's powerful legs until she is ready to be released.

Ruaha National Park
veterinarian, Dr. Alex Epaphras (left), and Sokoine University of Agriculture
veterinarian, Dr. Mpanduji, remove the dart from the giraffe's side. With the
anesthetic drugs wearing off, these wildlife immobilization experts quickly
wrap up the sampling and get the team safely out of the area. After a final
check to make sure the giraffe is doing well, they inject a drug to reverse the
anesthesia. Under many watchful eyes, the giraffe wakes up and heads back into
the bush.

HALI thanks the veterinary
team at Ruaha National Park for inviting us to participate in this important
research. We admire the dedication of park staff to understanding and
protecting wildlife health.

On June 15th, the HALI project is hosting the 3rd annual Ruaha Roundtable Meeting in Iringa, Tanzania. These roundtable meetings provide a forum for discussion and planning involving stakeholders working in natural resource management, health, and development in the Ruaha Ecosystem. Participants include Tanzania National Parks - Ruaha National Park personnel, the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania Veterinary Investigation Centres, livestock extension officers and district game officers, the Wildlife Conservation Society Ruaha Landscape Program, the Friends of Ruaha Society, Ruaha Carnivore Project, The Wildlife Connection, representatives from the Ruaha tourist industry and hunting companies, and other interested stakeholders in conservation, resource management and health.

This year's roundtable meeting will emphasize discussions on projects and activities in the area, along with a working session on data sharing and potential collaborations among projects. HALI is excited to host our friend and former project collaborator Alphonce Msigwa for a special student research presentation. Alphonse is finishing his research at Sokoine University of Agriculture, and will give the opening presentation entitled “Diversity and relative abundances of small mammalian carnivores in MBOMIPA Wildlife Management Area” at the meeting.

We look forward to these roundtables to connect with our partners and stakeholders, and to improve collaborations and communications among research and intervention programs in the area. One of our HALI team members will post a summary of the meeting outcome with some photos on the blog in a few weeks, along with any meeting highlights and plans for moving forward.

HALI Project

The Health for Animals and Livelihood Improvement (HALI) project works with local stakeholders to investigate health at the human-animal-environment interface in Tanzania.

Join the HALI Team...

HALI is supported by grant funding, awards, and through the contributions of our network of dedicated volunteers and team members. To ensure sustainability of our programs and to keep our talented teams and activities funded, HALI relies upon philanthropic support from private donors. Please consider supporting the HALI project by visiting our donation center at the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center.